


the unrealized ambitions of the foam

by thegreatpumpkin



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-09-16 13:23:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9273680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegreatpumpkin/pseuds/thegreatpumpkin
Summary: The sea has always been coming for her.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for depression, suicidal ideation, and attempted suicide.
> 
> This uses the version of Elrond and Elros' history where their names came from being found in the cave post-Sirion; thus, those are not the names they were given at birth.

She has loved, and loved, and loved again, but she has never loved anything the way she loves the sweet small bundles of elfling tucked now against her breast. It was a long, difficult labor, but they all came through it together, and it is nearly time to rest; only one thing to do first.

"I want them to be called after my brothers. This one—" she strokes one downy, dark head— "for Elured, and this one—" she kisses a tiny nose— "for Elurin." Eärendil smiles at her and says something gently teasing about telling them apart, but she is already drifting off, and no matter anyway; she could not confuse them even if her ears and eyes were stopped, not even if all she had was the feel of their heartbeats.

~

She cannot remember a time when their plight has not been desperate; Doriath is nothing but a dim memory of fear and flight. She did much of her coming-of-age on the long weary search for somewhere they might settle afterwards—somewhere beyond the reach of the Great Enemy or the lesser ones, those merciless scions of Finwe's corrupted son. (She still has nightmares of the fair-haired one sometimes, even though she knows he is long-dead, by her father's hand.) This haven is the safest place she has ever lived, but that is a poor measure, because nothing east of the sea is safe any longer.

Their plight is desperate—it has always been desperate—and so she lets Eärendil go when he sails. She hopes he will succeed, but does not hope to see him again. The world will take him from her, as it has taken her parents and grandparents and brothers, as it has taken everyone else she has ever loved, every distant glimpse of happiness that she has ever had the audacity to reach for.

But she has never loved anyone the way she loves the grey-eyed boys taking their first steps across the wide white tiles, not even Eärendil, and if he succeeds they may grow up in a world where _safety_ is a truth instead of an idea. She lets him go, because even if he is lost to her forever, beyond the ending of the world—that would be worth it.

~

She dreams of drowning; slipping down slowly beneath the water, silent, weightless. The sun is all around her, the bright blue glow of the ocean, the fat buoyant bubbles of her last breath lifting up and away until they disappear in the brightness. Her dress corrodes away from the salt, leaving her only in her skin, and she floats light and lifeless and completely untethered in the tide.

She wishes, when she wakes, that she could hold on to the solace the dream brings.

Without Eärendil, so many things fall to her. She has no real judiciary power—neither did he, when it came to it—but still, he had become a leader to the people by virtue of his nature. In his absence, they ask her advice as they would have asked his. She doesn't have his background, though; Eärendil was born to lead, but nurtured to it too. He'd been raised by his parents, a princess and a king's protégé, however deposed. She was raised by a nurse, her own royal parents dead and gone and unable to pass on any useful knowledge of diplomacy or civic management through the blood.

She does her best. Too often, her best is not good enough.

Elured and Elurin are the bright spots of her life. They are walking now, climbing everything, talking in giddy syllables that are sometimes even true words. She never confuses them, though their faces and forms are identical; Elured likes to hide behind things and under them, to pop out and surprise his brother, making them both fall about giggling; Elurin whispers baby-babble stories to ladybirds he finds on the floor, and carries about a poppet one of the ladies made him out of river-rushes and scrap cloth.

Sometimes she takes out her grandmother's stone and lets them play with it. They are entranced with the way it glitters, and the way it throws spangles of light onto every surface. Their eyes shine with wonder, and for a little while her heart is lighter.

She tells herself: _this is what my parents died for. I must protect it, or they died in vain._

But were it not for the light in those four small grey eyes, she would cast it into the sea without a second thought, and that's the truth of it.

~

Sometimes she dreams even awake.

The water is always closing over her head. It's no longer reassuring; it's no longer anything, just an absence of feeling. It gets harder and harder to swim to the surface, and sometimes she forgets why she should.

Then Elurin pats her cheek, saying, "Good Nana!" and Elured gives her a slobbery, sticky toddler kiss, and she finds herself gasping, filling her lungs with air again. There is no water.

~

There is a woman who comes sometimes, a refugee from Gondolin who served the princess. She rarely speaks, but she always seems to know when the water rises the highest. She sweeps the floors, or brings clean laundry, or simply leaves breakfast when it's late in the morning and no smoke has risen from their chimney.

She doesn't know her name. She doesn't know how to repay these small kindnesses. When she feels anything, she feels wretched for taking advantage so without even knowing the woman's name, but she also feels the deep relief of being clean and fed when she cannot make these things happen of her own volition.

Sometimes the woman smiles, and gathers up the boys, and kindly nudges her out the door. She goes down to the beach and sits on the rocks, soaking in the freezing spray, imagining what it would be like to be swept away.

When she comes home in the dark, dress dripping and her lips cracked dry with caked salt, the woman has a dry dress waiting and no judgment in her eyes. She knows. There is supper on the table, and they eat it together, quiet save for the boys' chatter; then the woman leaves.

She wonders, if she were not able to go sometimes, if she could not leave her precious boys in safety and dream of drowning, how she would ever go on. She thinks the woman knows that too.

~

When the attackers come, she does not immediately know.

The roar of the ocean drowns out any number of sounds, hides all manner of sins. When she hears, she feels the first thing she has felt in a long time—and for a brief adrenaline-fueled moment, even terror is wonderful, because it is not _nothing_.

The strange, painful pleasure fades when she realizes it is not herself she needs to be terrified for. She has never run so fast in her life as when she imagines what the blood-haired monster will do to her boys, never felt so dangerous. She will gut them with her teeth before they harm her sons, disembowel them with her fingernails, she will—

The house is empty. There is no woman, no Elured, no Elurin—the door swings open on its hinges, and there are things knocked over and scattered about, careless. Elurin's poppet lies abandoned beneath an overturned chair. She knows, instinctively, what has happened, but still she searches, opening doors, peering beneath beds and into all of Elured's hidey-holes, her hands shaking as she throws open cupboard doors and clothes-chests.

Her voice is her mother's voice, rising, hysterical, screaming the same words her mother screamed before she died.

_Elurin! Elured!_

_Elurin! Elured!_

She named them after her brothers, her lost brothers, oh foolish _foolish_ girl, whatever did she expect, that she could keep them this time? That she could love anything, anything, and the world would leave it untouched?

She pulls open a drawer so hard it comes free of the chest and clatters to the floor. Her sons are not hiding in it, of course; they are too big to fit now, but her frantic mind cannot help remembering the tiny precious bundles they once were. There is a less precious bundle in the drawer that brings her up short, though, glittering mockingly as she unwraps it.

She has always wanted to cast it into the sea.

She has always wanted to cast _herself_ into the sea.

Her sons are gone, her brothers, her parents, her husband; even the nameless woman who, after all, was a sort of friend. The water has risen, and risen, filled her nose and mouth and eyes until she is all the way under.

Let this be the end of it.

The sea has always been coming for her; now, at last, it is time to stop swimming.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Pablo Nerudo's _Water_.


End file.
